New York isn't the only East Coast metropolis that's seen violent encounters in its cabs recently — Washington D.C., the American frontier of traffic patterns, has been the capital of taxi assaults, as seven D.C. cab passengers have been attacked by their cab drivers in recent weeks.

What is undisputed is this: W. Bryan Jennings, an investment banker with Morgan Stanley, got a cab…
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D.C.'s ABC affiliate has reported that six of the seven cab victims have been women, prompting Taxicab Commission Chairman Ron Linton and his talking toupe (sorry, but it's pretty hard to ignore) to issue a special warning to female passengers to be wary of their cabbie. Though Linton insists that no passenger should feel threatened in a D.C. cab by anything other than the devil-may-care attitude with which the city's motorists handle their vehicles, he admits that the recent string of violence demands that passengers take extra precautions. "What we're seeing," Linton told ABC, "is an increase in physically manhandling their fares. Striking them. Pulling them out of their cabs. One woman was pulled out by her ankles. That driver is under arrest."

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All seven of the offending drivers have been arrested and the D.C. Taxicab Commission is so serious about safeguarding its passengers that it's installing panic buttons in every cab immediately. Well, not immediately, but definitely by December.